The lake whitefish smoke very well. In fact, if I didn't have salmon, I would be tempted to make a couple of runs a year for whiteys from the Columbia system.

As for your ideas on shad/whitefish-- you might have something, Zen, with the slow-cooking idea. However, the lake whitefish I've kept were pretty oily, probably why they were great smoked. Don't know how they would be cooked fresh. The flip side of that is in the Midwest, folks hold fish boils where they cook massive quantities of lake whitefish as well as the assorted veggies that go with the boil. So the whitefish can't be too bad.

You've got me thinking about smoking shad as well. I've been doing a bit of research after the AP ran that warning about parasites in the Puget Sound shad. It seems the Snohomish has some shad, according the WDFW, but the Columbia is still the mother lode. May have to travel down there as the shad we have are the species that was named "delicious" as part of its scientific name.

Keith